How do you interpret a dendrogram in cluster analysis?

Table of Contents

The key to interpreting a dendrogram is to focus on the height at which any two objects are joined together. In the example above, we can see that E and F are most similar, as the height of the link that joins them together is the smallest. The next two most similar objects are A and B.

Can SPSS do cluster analysis?

SPSS offers three methods for the cluster analysis: K-Means Cluster, Hierarchical Cluster, and Two-Step Cluster. K-means cluster is a method to quickly cluster large data sets. The researcher define the number of clusters in advance. This is useful to test different models with a different assumed number of clusters.

How do you analyze a hierarchical cluster?

The key to interpreting a hierarchical cluster analysis is to look at the point at which any given pair of cards “join together” in the tree diagram. Cards that join together sooner are more similar to each other than those that join together later.

How do you choose the number of clusters in a dendrogram?

In the dendrogram locate the largest vertical difference between nodes, and in the middle pass an horizontal line. The number of vertical lines intersecting it is the optimal number of clusters (when affinity is calculated using the method set in linkage).

Which clustering algorithm uses a dendrogram?

agglomerative clustering
Construction of dendrogram This is known as agglomerative clustering. The other alternative is the opposite procedure of top-down in which you start by considering the entire system as one cluster and then keep sub clustering it until you reach individual data samples. This process is known as divisive clustering.

What does a Dendrogram show?

A dendrogram (right) representing nested clusters (left). A dendrogram is a type of tree diagram showing hierarchical clustering — relationships between similar sets of data. They are frequently used in biology to show clustering between genes or samples, but they can represent any type of grouped data.

How do you find the number of clusters in a dendrogram?